


The Navy Man

by Renne



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:43:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renne/pseuds/Renne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man's Chest: a look at what Norrington's life has become through the eyes of others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Navy Man

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted: July 2006

In taverns from one end of the isle of Tortuga to the other he was referred to as The Commodore.

It was clear the man was of the Navy when he arrived there in a traveller's berth on a Dutch merchantman; no pirate worth his salt would ever mistake that blue frock coat and white wig for anything else. Not more than once, anyway.

At first the denizens of Tortuga tread warily around him. Was he a trap, a lure, mutton dressed up as lamb? Were they meant to think of him as easy pickings and in doing so incite the wrath of the Royal Navy? Was he a spy, even, and a poor one at that? As time passed and crews came and went their attitude towards him changed.

No one could see an agent of the Navy ever staying in a port like Tortuga for the length this one had, on a slow fall into oblivion, and it was easier for those not accustomed to more complex concepts to see him as a man who'd fled his previous life rather than a willing spy.

Whatever his purpose for being in Tortuga, a single Navy man, even a man of rank, was of little threat. A knife between the ribs as he stumbled back to the one inn on the whole island that would have traffic with a Navy man (and scuttlebutt was he'd offered the innkeep _gold_ for a berth at his inn and though the room was ransacked and the man rolled, gold was found with neither) would finish him as easily as it would any lawless scallywag, except strange rumour clung to this man like fog on a shipwreck.

Some said he was the Navy man from Port Royal who'd resigned his commission.

He'd initially carried himself like a man used to command and used to having his orders met, so it wasn't so far fetched a speculation. They called him The Commodore, and would throw him mocking salutes in the dark, muddy streets as he staggered from bar to bed.

Some said he was the Navy man who hadn't been able to end the days of the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow even as he stood on the gallows, noose about his neck. Some said there had to be more to it, that he had to have been tainted somehow by Sparrow ('for 'e's a Navy man, and none of them be known for charity towards pirates, y'ken?') to allow that now near-legendary "one day's head start", regardless of the way he had then pursued Sparrow through hell and high water, right into the heart of a hurricane.

One thing was certain: if he was that Navy man who'd been on the receiving end of one of Sparrow's renowned escapades, then it went without saying that he would fall under Sparrow's protection. After all, who would rid Sparrow of the right to finish off the man who couldn't catch him himself? Oh, for sure that Navy man from Port Royal had been the scourge of pirates the length and breadth of the Spanish Main, but once Jack Sparrow had slipped from his grasp all other freebooters faded to insignificance in the eyes of a man possessed. No, it was Sparrow's right to end the Navy man's life, and no other.

There was, after all, still a little honour amongst thieves.

The softer of heart said that for the pitiful man's sake it was probably for the best that he carried even that rumour with him, for pirates were never kind to those who'd hang them by the neck given the chance.

Of course, no one really knew whether or not the Navy man was still under the protection of Sparrow either, because the _Black Pearl_ hadn't made port in Tortuga once in the time the Navy man had been there (it wasn't the only pirate haven to be found in the Caribbean) and again rumours circulated that Jack Sparrow had disappeared in uncharted waters.

So the Navy man continued on living out a charmed life in a pirate port at the bottom of a dirty bottle of rum.


End file.
